According to statistics featured on Ookla’s NetIndex, Rwanda has the fastest Internet speed in Africa – faster than Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa. The central African country currently has an average download speed of up to 7.28 Mbps, which is more than double the 3.28 Mbps speed it had just six months ago.

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda (Image: Flickr.com/ David Shankbone)

Ghana, which was at the top of the list in March 2012, has now moved down three places to fourth on the list, with Libya (5.12 Mbps) and Ethiopia (4.82 Mbps) taking up the second and third spot, respectively.

Rwanda’s Minister of Youth and ICT, Jean Philbert Nsengimana, said although the result was good news for the country, a lot more work still needs to be done.

“This shows that our efforts are paying off although we still need to do more in the area of affordability of broadband. Rwanda’s performance in broadband speed is a result of deliberate efforts of the government that invested in fibre optic rollout and purchase of capacity,” said Nsengimana.

According to The New Times, “other African countries with the fastest broadband speeds include Kenya with 4.34 Mbps, currently ranked 5th in Africa, dropping from 2nd position six months ago; Morocco with 3.51 Mbps, ranked 8th in Africa; and South Africa with 3.31 Mbps, ranked 10th in Africa and 118th in the world.

Nigeria ranks 13th in Africa and 138th in the world with broadband download speeds of 2.73 Mbps and remains the second West African country with the fastest broadband speed after Ghana.”

Rwanda currently relies on three submarine fibre optic cable systems for Internet connection such as the East Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSY), The East African Marine Systems.